Faery Lands Forlorn

by Dave Duncan

  Thinal came forward a few feet. Perhaps he thought he might be less frightening than Little Chicken, but the girl's hand gripped Rap's very tightly as she approached him. Then they stopped, and for a moment no one spoke.

  "I shall call you Small One," she announced.

  Bewilderment crossed Thinal's face, and he looked to Rap.

  "Name her," Rap said very quietly, almost mouthing the words.

  "Oh. I shall call you . . . Dark Lady."

  She giggled, as if that were funny. "Small One, you are welcome to our hearth and spring. We offer what we have, and may the Good be prospered by your coming. May your stay be joyful and your leaving . . . er . . ."

  "Be long delayed," Thinal prompted.

  Her eyes sparkled. "Be long delayed!"

  Thinal bowed. "May the Good grow within your house and the Evil diminish. May your men be strong and your women fertile, your children wax in beauty and your elders in wisdom. May your crops flourish, your herds increase, and all your arrows fly true."

  Forest Sleeper—or Dark Lady—clapped her tiny hands joyfully. She looked up at Rap in reproach. "He knows the words!"

  "Then he shall teach me."

  "It's a faunish greeting," Thinal said, with a smug glance at Rap. He repeated the ritual, line by line, and Rap in turn spoke it to the girl.

  She laughed when he had done. Then she became troubled again, stepping very close to Thinal and giving him the same steady stare she had given Rap. "Small One, what is nearest your heart?"

  Again Thinal's eyes flicked to Rap's for guidance.

  "Your greatest ambition?" Rap muttered.

  "Ah! Dark Lady, I seek to be relieved of a spell placed upon me by a wicked sorcerer."

  The fairy studied him for longer than she had Rap. Then she gave the same reply, but hesitantly. "You do not know!"

  And now obviously it was Little Chicken's turn, and the fairy was gaining confidence. She told him that his name was Big Ears, at which Rap and Thinal hastily suppressed grins. The goblin's slanted eyes widened slightly.

  "I term you Beauty of the Night," he said in his heavily accented impish.

  Rap was surprised and gratified. Not bad at all! Knowing how goblins disparaged women, he had been afraid of some surly rudeness.

  Beauty of the Night rattled off her ritual welcome, and Little Chicken replied with Thinal's faunish formula.

  Then he was given the close stare. "Big Ears, what is nearest your heart?"

  Rap knew the answer to that. He wondered if Little Chicken would be truthful. He was, but he spoke in goblin.

  "Kill Flat Nose. Long, long pain."

  This time the scrutiny was longer still. Then the fairy child said, "Oh!" and held up both hands to the goblin. Rap was astonished to see that her deep jet eyes had brimmed over; her cheeks of polished ebony were glistening with tears.

  "You do know!" She tugged at the goblin's arms. Puzzled and wary, he sank down to his knees. Even then she had to rise on tiptoe to embrace him, to reach up and kiss his cheek.

  Rap and Thinal shot each other glances of mingled astonishment and amusement, Thinal rolling his eyes; but before either could frame a suitably ribald comment, Little Chicken cried out and clutched at the tiny form, suddenly gone limp.

  He lowered her gently to me ground. Rap knelt to see, but even as he did so, he had no doubt. She was dead.

  Just like that—dead.

  Faun and goblin stared at each other across the body in mutual horror.

  "Did not hurt!" Little Chicken protested. He scrambled to his feet and backed away, paler than Rap had ever seen him, livid green blotches highlighting his cheekbones. "Did not touch!"

  "No, you didn't. I saw."

  Thinal gave a choked cry and vanished. A thong snapped, a loincloth fluttered to the ground, leaving Sagorn naked and absurd—and paralyzed with shock, staring down at the body. All the color drained out of his already pale jotunn cheeks, turning them almost as white as the strands of hair still plastered over his face by the previous night's rain.

  "He didn't touch her!" Rap said. "She put her arms around him. He did nothing! In fact, he had his hands behind him, like this."

  Sagorn licked sallow lips. "I saw, too. Thinal did." His bewilderment seemed as great as Rap's.

  "Well?" Rap shouted. "Doctor? You're the great scholar! Explain this, old man—there's a dead child here. What did we do wrong?"

  "I . . . I have no idea." Sagorn gazed at Rap in frank dismay. "No cachexia or morbidity or trauma I have ever encountered . . ." He sank down and felt the tiny neck for a pulse. Then he closed the all-black eyes with fingers that seemed cruelly huge. He rose stiffly; seeming to notice his nudity for the first time, he stooped to retrieve the loincloth.

  "I have never seen anything like that," he muttered. "I know of nothing to induce moribundity with such alacrity. Postulation of occult agency must—" He sucked in his breath.

  "Well?"

  The old man was staring at Rap with pure horror contorting his features. "Nothing!"

  But there was something.

  Then there was no Sagorn. He had vanished, calling back Thinal in his place.

  Rap roared and stepped over the dead girl to grab the imp by the shoulders. "What did he remember?"

  "What? Rap!"

  Rap could barely restrain himself. He wanted to shake Thinal like a dusty horse blanket. "What did Sagorn think of, that made him leave like that? He remembered something, didn't he?"

  "I don't know."

  "Think, man! Think!"

  "Rap, you're hurting . . . He thought of a book he read—"

  "What did it say?"

  "I don't remember! I don't know! It was years ago, in the Imperial library. Just a book, Rap. About Faerie, I think—"

  He was lying. Rap was certain of it. But to bully Thinal was to risk Darad. To demand that Sagorn be brought back would be useless, for he would not remain if he did not wish to be questioned. With a great effort, Rap released the imp and swung around to the goblin, whose ugly face bore a strangely bemused expression.

  "She spoke to you. Didn't she? She whispered something in your ear. What did she say?"

  The goblin pouted. "Don't know."

  "You're lying, trash!"

  A dangerous glint shone in Little Chicken's eye. "Not impish. Not goblin. Didn't understand."

  He was lying, also. In dismay, Rap stared around at the hot jungle and the pitiful cluster of huts, bereft now of their last pathetic inhabitant. Wanting to hide his tears from the others, he muttered something about a spade and walked away.

  He wept.

  There was a mystery here that he could not start to understand. He was only a dumb stableboy, or at best a factor's clerk—far from home and hopelessly out of his depth. Inos seemed farther away than ever and he more lost than ever, trapped with two companions he dared not trust.

  He had brought an innocent child to her death. Somehow his blundering ignorance had killed her.

  The world was a much stranger place than he had expected.

  Some little talk:

  There was the Door to which I found no Key;

  There was the Veil through which I might not see:

  Some little talk awhile of ME and THEE

  There was—and then no more of THEE and ME.

  Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (§32, 1879)

  FOUR

  Destiny with men

  1

  "Steady there, lady," Inos said. "Steady! Now I take a look at your hoof. All part of the game." She slid from the saddle, then tried to comfort Sesame, patting her neck and cooing. "Sorry, girl! Sorry!" Sesame champed her bit and backed away rebelliously, clattering on the wind-polished pebbles; she kept that up for several minutes before allowing herself to be soothed. She was one of the sweetest-tempered mounts Inos had ever met, but at the moment she was very mad, and with good reason.

  The only vegetation in sight was thorny scrub, useless for tying reins to. Apart from that there was sand and st
one as far as the eye could see, hot enough to bake bread. Heat lay on the desert like a lake of molten lead. It shimmered in silver mirages and blurred the rocky ridges, even the closest. It poached the eyeballs. The Agonistes were barely visible ghosts, snowcapped and remote.

  Sesame was still fretting, perturbed by the lack of other horses, perhaps not trusting Inos to find the road home again. The last of the hunt had just topped the ridge ahead, disappearing after the hounds; the beaters and dog handlers were leagues back. Timeless silence had returned to the barren hills; the air was still and cruel, too hot to breathe, and smelling of dust.

  Inos unhooked the canteen and dropped her veil to drink. She had no objection to covering her face out here in the hills, because everyone did, even Azak. She ought to pretend to inspect Sesame's shoes, but at the moment there was no one in sight, so she could just say she had done so. She shook the canteen and scowled at it for being so near to empty. The sky was frighteningly huge, and she could imagine herself as a God might see her, an insignificant dot on a great barren expanse of rock.

  She replaced the canteen, wiping her face with her sleeve. It had been a tougher day than usual—she wondered again what on earth she was hoping to achieve, broiling herself in the desert. For more than two weeks now she had been imprisoned in Arakkaran, Pandemia's most luxurious jail, and in those two weeks she seemed to have accomplished nothing at all. Nothing for Krasnegar; nothing even for her own satisfaction, for she had not achieved that monarch-to-monarch talk with Azak that she had set out to win.

  Likely it would have done her little good anyway, for Sultan Azak seemed to spend all his days in hunting, all his evenings at state dinners with his brothers and uncles and cousins. When had he ever had the time to learn anything about world politics? He was only an untutored savage, who probably knew less than she did.

  "Stubborn, I am!" she told Sesame. "I just don't want to quit! I don't want to go crawling back to Kade, admitting that I can’t even back a man into a corner when I try. Stubborn!" Stubborn as a certain mule-headed faun she had known once.

  As far as she knew, Kade was not making much progress, either. She seemed to pass her days in teaching the palace women how to run tea parties and ladies' salons, and the sorceress had been encouraging this importation of Imperial customs. There had been no change in the situation in Krasnegar—so Rasha had told Kade. Of course news took a month or longer to travel as far as Kinvale. To cross all Pandemia might take years, so what the sorceress had not heard, no one had.

  "So why do I bother, lady? Tell me that!" Inos patted the pony's sweaty neck. "I'll tell you why I bother—because I don't want to waste my days lounging around with Kade drinking tea and eating cake and growing old and fat!"

  Sesame blew a loud breath of disbelief.

  "Well, you've got a point," Inos admitted, scanning all around again without seeing any change in the empty land. "It would be more comfortable, and I'm probably aging much faster out here. So you're absolutely right—I do it because I want to show I'm as tough as any of these hairy-faced baboons."

  Sesame shook her head and backed up a few steps.

  "No? Well, I suppose I'm not, am I? And they don't care now anyway, do they?"

  The novelty had worn off, and the princes were mostly shunning Inos. Perhaps they resented her, and the example she was setting for their womenfolk. Some of the younger men still spoke to her, although what they wanted to discuss would have been unthinkable in Kinvale. Only one of them had actually offered to include marriage in the arrangement, young Petkish, and she had not seen him around lately. She hoped there was no connection between his marriage proposal and his disappearance.

  Still, at least she had learned that a woman could get married in Zark. Marriage was unusual, and it brought very few rights, but it was possible. Nice to know.

  "You're absolutely correct," Inos told her horse sternly. "I do this because I don't like being snubbed by an ignorant oversize savage. He knows I want a private word with him and he's deliberately staying out of my way, and I'm going to chase after him until he's sick of the sight of me."

  Sesame sighed disbelievingly.

  And then a horse came into view in the distance, one of the hunt returning. It was heading straight for Inos, so obviously the rider had already seen her. In a few minutes she recognized Kar's big gray. Surprise! To see Kar farther removed from Azak than his own shadow was very rare.

  As usual, Azak had outridden the entire court, vanishing over the horizon with uncles and brothers straggling in pursuit behind him. Often he even outrode his brown-clad guards, known as the family men. Kar's return meant that the kill had been made; the others would be along shortly.

  In a moment he flowed up effortlessly beside Inos's still-restless mare and simultaneously slid from his saddle with a grace that suggested descent from a thousand generations of horsemen. He dropped his own reins brashly, snapping a word of command at the gray. Then he reached out to stroke Sesame's neck, and she stilled as if soothed by magic. Azak had the same knack. It wasn't quite Rap's magic, but it was almost as impressive.

  "It was just a rock," Inos said. "Then I thought I'd give her a rest."

  "Which foot?" Kar inquired, with a smile.

  Kar always smiled. Kar had probably been born smiling and most likely slept smiling and would be acting out of character if he did not die smiling. Alone among the full-grown princes, he was clean-shaven, his face round and boyish. He was shorter and slighter than most of the others, probably in his late twenties, a little older than Azak. He was another ak'Azakar, either brother or half brother to the sultan. His eyes were wide and innocent, as red as any, and yet the coldest eyes Inos had seen outside a fish market. There was something sinister about Kar that she could not place, and yet she had never heard him raise his voice or even seen him frown. Or stop smiling.

  "Right front," she said.

  "It looked more like back left." The smile grew broader, buckling his cheeks without touching his eyes at all. "But it doesn't matter, does it?" He stooped to run his hand down Sesame's fetlock and then lift her hoof. "It was quite realistic."

  "Who is telling lies about me? You could not have seen it yourself."

  "I see everything."

  Inos had preferred not to watch the antelope being pulled down and torn apart. Coursing was low on her list of favorite sports.

  "It fooled most of them," Kar remarked to the hoof he was studying. "The Big Man didn't notice, luckily. But this frog does seem a little tender. Did she have any trouble earlier? Real trouble?" Even when he was bent double, there was something very irritating in Kar's manner.

  Tempted to lash out with her boot at so profitable a target, Inos regretfully refrained. "Not that I noticed. I mean, no! She was fine."

  He grunted, released the hoof, and went for another. Sesame tossed her head as he ducked below it. "Don't ever try it when he might see."

  "I have more sense than that."

  "I thought you had more sense than to try it at all. You think your sex would protect you?"

  Inos rejected her first choice of response and framed a more civil reply. "Certainly not. I expect I should receive much the same lecture as Prince Petkish did."

  Kar made a scoffing noise. "Lecture? You think that was all Petkish got, a lecture?"

  As huntmaster, Azak was a fanatic. Princes who muffed a chance at game or displayed anything less than total mastery of their mounts were certain to receive royal reprimands, which were usually long and invariably savage. No matter how senior the culprit, or how many lowborn attendants might be within earshot, Azak would bellow out his scorn and contempt for all to hear. He wielded an enormous vocabulary without pity—ridicule upon humiliation, insult upon sarcasm—irony, scorn, and scurrility. Frequently the tongue-lashing would continue until tears dribbled down the victim's cheeks, and days might then pass before he dared come again into the sultan's presence. A public flogging would have been kinder and less feared.

  Azak, in short, treate
d the princes with undisguised contempt. He was reasonably patient with the lowborn—with grooms, falconers, and other attendants—but he made no allowance for human fallibility in royalty. It was not a style of leadership that appealed to Inos. The third or fourth time she witnessed one of his brutal tirades, the victim had been young Petkish, just two days after he had started inserting marriage into his frequent offers of cohabitation. His horse had balked at jumping a wadi, a very nasty little gully, rocky and deep, its edges crumbling. Azak had somehow seen what happened behind his back and had returned to berate the culprit with a fury of invective that continued until the lad dismounted and threw himself on the ground before Azak's horse, rubbed his face in the dirt, and begged for forgiveness. He had then been sent home, and Inos had not seen him since.

  Within a few minutes, Azak had been leading the remainder of the hunt at full gallop over terrain that would have caused any reasonable man to dismount and proceed on foot. The remaining princes had clung to him like fleas, with Inos in their midst, heart in mouth—if mere princes could do it, then a queen must not fail. By a miracle no horse or rider had come to grief, but that night she had awakened several times sweating and shaking; and understanding a little better.

  She understood, also, that such leadership did not permit Azak himself ever to fall below perfection. His mount must never stumble, his arrows never miss. And apparently they never did. It was small wonder that the younger men worshipped him, and even the oldest cowered below his frown.

  But now she felt a stab of alarm. She had liked Petkish. Almost alone among the princes he had seemed to appreciate that a woman might be human once in a while. "What else happened to Petkish, apart from the lecture?"

  "He was banished."

  Kar was still doubled over, but Inos kept her face schooled anyway, hiding her distaste. Banished—for a single refusal, or because he had been too friendly with the visiting royalty? Poor Petkish and his tiny ginger beard! Either way, he had learned a hard lesson.